being worked on by a student, so its too late to voice any concerns now
as this is just slapping the student right across the face. Its at least

I am quite sure that the quality of Debian and its continued viability
as a modern OS is way more important than anybody's feelings.

Sorry, I have to respond to this -- I have no strong opinions about init
systems, but I do have strong opinions about how Debian treats new
contributors.

The quality of Debian and its continued viability as a modern OS is
directly dependent on people being willing to work on it, and the actions
of Debian towards new contributors will last far longer than any technical
decision today. And people's feelings impact their retention as
contributors.

It's not very meaningful to say that a thing is more important than
another thing that it depends on.

And if it turns out that systemd is today necessary for Debian's
"viability as a modern OS", there are ways for the project to make that
decision without being rude to folks who have been working on other
systems (and, of course, without them being rude to folks working on
systemd either). The objection is to the manner in which the statement was
made; it was not a claim about the truth of the statement.